Ostronomos
Well-Known Member
PAP: Do we create the very reality that we observe?
https://csferrie.medium.com/do-we-create...62d1fab93b
EXCERPTS: John Wheeler called it the Participatory Anthropic Principle. It goes something like this. The answers we get from posing questions to Nature depend very much on the questions we ask. Without any questions, nothing would be answered — hence we are participants in the bringing about of events...
[...] The seeds of the participatory universe were sown in a thought experiment called the delayed choice experiment ... One of two things must be true. Either your choice sends a message back in time to tell the photon how to behave, or the photon doesn’t really exist as a definite entity until it is observed. Within a small laboratory experiment, this all seems academic. But Wheeler was thinking on a cosmic scale.
If you point your telescope in the right direction, you can create a double-slit experiment the size of the universe! [...] Every single photon from that star could have taken one of many paths to reach us here on Earth. The telescope used for the photo detects the path, and many photons project an image of a ring around the lensing galaxy. If instead, the light from all directions was combined before detection, then a wave-like pattern would be detected, implying the photon took all paths.
Surely, if the light chooses one path or another, it did so many billions of years ago when it encountered the intervening galaxy. Yet, how the photon manifests in the world is only decided up here and now, through the way we choose to arrange our telescope. From your point of view, that photon has been waiting for billions of years for you to come along and choose how it should manifest in the world.
Recall how the game 20 Questions works. [...] But let’s change it up a bit. Suppose there were 20 of us “answerers” and you had to ask each question to one person in succession...
[...] From your perspective, the game is no different. You assume the 20 people all agreed on the answer — transistor radio — before the game began. But here’s the kicker. In this game of 20 Questions, each of the 20 participants agreed beforehand to not think of something. The only thing they agreed to do was answer yes or no in a way that didn’t contradict any previous answer. Only when the last question was asked did “transistor radio” come into existence as the answer.
The point is subtle, but obvious in hindsight. Before you started asking the questions, there was no “answer.” It was only through your choice of question that an eventual answer materialized in the world. Wheeler called this “it from bit” — the physical world (“it”) is brought about through asking it yes or no questions (“bits”). Why is the universe the way it is? Turns out, it literally depends who’s asking...
This is further proof that we are not just passive observers but powerful creators of reality, to paraphrase an article I read years ago. The evidence for this is most pronounced in the supernatural world of God and demons. I am one of the only people in History to have witnessed this world. It requires a special kind of observer with a special kind of DNA that allows them to access this dimension when they reach adulthood.
https://csferrie.medium.com/do-we-create...62d1fab93b
EXCERPTS: John Wheeler called it the Participatory Anthropic Principle. It goes something like this. The answers we get from posing questions to Nature depend very much on the questions we ask. Without any questions, nothing would be answered — hence we are participants in the bringing about of events...
[...] The seeds of the participatory universe were sown in a thought experiment called the delayed choice experiment ... One of two things must be true. Either your choice sends a message back in time to tell the photon how to behave, or the photon doesn’t really exist as a definite entity until it is observed. Within a small laboratory experiment, this all seems academic. But Wheeler was thinking on a cosmic scale.
If you point your telescope in the right direction, you can create a double-slit experiment the size of the universe! [...] Every single photon from that star could have taken one of many paths to reach us here on Earth. The telescope used for the photo detects the path, and many photons project an image of a ring around the lensing galaxy. If instead, the light from all directions was combined before detection, then a wave-like pattern would be detected, implying the photon took all paths.
Surely, if the light chooses one path or another, it did so many billions of years ago when it encountered the intervening galaxy. Yet, how the photon manifests in the world is only decided up here and now, through the way we choose to arrange our telescope. From your point of view, that photon has been waiting for billions of years for you to come along and choose how it should manifest in the world.
Recall how the game 20 Questions works. [...] But let’s change it up a bit. Suppose there were 20 of us “answerers” and you had to ask each question to one person in succession...
[...] From your perspective, the game is no different. You assume the 20 people all agreed on the answer — transistor radio — before the game began. But here’s the kicker. In this game of 20 Questions, each of the 20 participants agreed beforehand to not think of something. The only thing they agreed to do was answer yes or no in a way that didn’t contradict any previous answer. Only when the last question was asked did “transistor radio” come into existence as the answer.
The point is subtle, but obvious in hindsight. Before you started asking the questions, there was no “answer.” It was only through your choice of question that an eventual answer materialized in the world. Wheeler called this “it from bit” — the physical world (“it”) is brought about through asking it yes or no questions (“bits”). Why is the universe the way it is? Turns out, it literally depends who’s asking...
This is further proof that we are not just passive observers but powerful creators of reality, to paraphrase an article I read years ago. The evidence for this is most pronounced in the supernatural world of God and demons. I am one of the only people in History to have witnessed this world. It requires a special kind of observer with a special kind of DNA that allows them to access this dimension when they reach adulthood.
